There was a thing in a magazine interview (some may recognise which one) which asked the interviewees: If you have unlimited skill, time and resources, which loco would you model? The vast majority of responders came up with big, complicated locomotives. If I were to answer I would say something really simple and mundane like a Ruston, Simplex, Lister, etc, but I would do it so well that it would be amazingly good. Frank, you have demonstrated what I mean - bravo!

Well said Si, to take the proposal one step further, if they actually started the project they probably would never complete it. Franck, on the other hand has produced a superb Loco in the blink of an eye.

Si wrote:There was a thing in a magazine interview (some may recognise which one) which asked the interviewees: If you have unlimited skill, time and resources, which loco would you model? The vast majority of responders came up with big, complicated locomotives. If I were to answer I would say something really simple and mundane like a Ruston, Simplex, Lister, etc, but I would do it so well that it would be amazingly good. Frank, you have demonstrated what I mean - bravo!

Thank you for your reply.

You will be happy because I have also a Lister that are already built. I need just to paint. And I have also in kit for the moment a rapier also.

I will exhibit the 10th & 11th January 2015 at St Albans model railway exhibition (London). Si I need to have more typical british locomotive to show. I have to paint my lister.

I have also a new project. On Rumanian narrow gauge there are plenty rail trucks or rail cars like that

It's plenty of atmosphere. The germans done it also with combi VW. So I decided that I need also to have mine. I doodle between combi, austin mini, ...

But there is always prototype that exists so I did some reaserch and I found this

In fact Canadian national did 5 cars like that for inspection car. So if Canadians did that, I could do it for my narrow gauge.

This is my unfinished version with HLW motor, esu decoder. I need to paint it, weather it a little, add sticker on it, a surfbord because it will be the rail car of the local surf club (Woolacombe bay is famous for surfing)

Nice one Franck, I remember some discussion a while back about feasibility of using a Mini on 15in gauge, 2ft is still a bit tight. I suppose it could just be a mini body fitted on a conventional railway chassis. It would not be too difficult to lift the body up as they are not too heavy. The Canadian ones are on standard gauge. The Land Rover narrow gauge conversion in the UK shows how it can be done on narrow gauge, and I love those Romanian conversions. I sometimes wonder if they got the idea from narrow gauge modelling. One of my projects is a narrow gauge railway with rail mounted Japanese road vehicles. I started a while back, but I hope to use them on a new mini layout.Those 1/12th scale models are not that cheap, a bit too risky for me.

I used to have a mini that colour , same model, the original 850cc engine, which was better than the later 1000cc version. Even fully loaded with 4 people in it it could easily take on other non sporty cars, especially on hills. The modern re-incarnation of the Mini is not a real Mini, whereas the Citroen C1 I have now has a lot of the qualities, with many improvements of the old Mini.